


Spring

by choir



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choir/pseuds/choir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takao dreams of things he wishes he did not see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spring

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE READ:**
> 
> Before I start: this piece has a lot of triggers? I wouldn't necessarily say that there's major graphic description of violence, but I still wanted to warn people so I tagged it as such. I _do describe a lot of what these characters went through on the battlefield_ , which includes death and blood and guns and the PTSD problem during WWI. _You have been warned._
> 
> Also: this fic is based on WWI, but is not a completely accurate description. I apologize if I get some of the details wrong, in terms of disabled persons' or historical happenings.

 

 

It is some time during the war. If one asks, Takao would not have been able to give an answer.

The doctor tends to the gashes along Takao's back, the knife scars that stretch and form a tree along his shoulder. The bullet wound in his thigh; the scab and absence of flesh in his biceps. He screams, at least he thinks he does, as the doctor prods at him and shouts orders to the nurses. Screams until his voice is raw, screams until he coughs and lets out a soundless string of words. He can listen, then, to the frantic shouts of shell-shock patients and the empty, shuddery breaths of the dying. Takao nearly laughs; a big, beautiful church housing the failures of war.

But the doctor--"Midorima," he later says--has gentle hands, different from anyone else who has ever cared for him. He recalls the face of his mother (rough, calloused fingers) at the touch, and melts into the cot that smells of mildew and vomit and silences his twitching legs.

(Later, through his fading consciousness, he could have sworn Midorima kneading his fingers through Takao's hair; a soft, unnecessary thing--but what peace it brings to the cracked bones in his body.)

 

 

He never expects to wake.

 

 

He wakes. At first, he wonders if this is hell--an endless, aching black--before he realizes that his heart; he can hear it in his ears, the way it flows into his fingers.

He moves his thumb. Slowly. Gently.

Next, his leg. The pain makes him wince. It's still there. Not amputated. Yet.

The left arm--okay. The right--not so much. The ability to prop himself up, to open his eyes--well, he figures, those can wait.

He pauses, lets himself fade back into his subconscious. Feels Midorima's hands, again, by his throat. Taking a pulse. _Don't leave_ , he wants to say, _not now_. But Midorima is a stranger, one who has others to take care of, besides him. Takao tries not to ponder on the idea of a stranger; it reminds him too much of the strangers with smiles stretched from ear to ear that stare at him from the muddy dirt of No Man's Land.

Takao wonders if the doctor has the ability to stretch out his affection to so many people, and let them in while keeping them out. Takao sympathizes with the feeling; he is not close to anyone, now.

(What he doesn't say is that he was--he was close to many people. But war is not kind to understanding, to compassion.)

Takao dissipates in and out; touches the sheets, damp with sweat, and lets them slip through his fingers. In, out. In, out. There are fingers at his collarbone, against the cool washcloth on his forehead. The nuns talk of the French, of the advancing German line. Hopefully the German soldiers will end the war, they say. Damn French and British. They speak of morphine--Meino, one of the other two doctors, is addicted; he steals it from under their coffins--and lives and deaths, of things that have passed and of things that still are. They silence the screaming man in the corner by the window, tuck extra pillows under Takao's head when the man on the cot next to him begins to smell (they didn't notice, for the first few hours.)

During those weeks, of the endless cycle of tipping over and climbing back, Takao teaches himself to breathe through the stench of the room--he thinks there must be over thirty, in this small space. He learns how to open his eyes and refocus them, to look past the men who still stare into the battle field and the swarm of blue bugs. Takao knows of them, too; they mix with the red and slowly become a stampede over the backs of his eyes.

The nuns carry off more men, day by day. It is almost routine; at seven, they cover the deceased with a cloth; at eight, men come in and take them off the cots. Takao wonders if they are burned or buried, these unidentified, mutilated men. But he does not hope; no one has time for a proper burial anymore, and Takao does not blame them. It is not something to lose sleep over; the thought of soulless veterans, red shoulders, torn up legs bent out of shape. The legs of warriors, Takao thinks.

"Doctor Midorima," says Takao one day, "am I going to die?"

Midorima tips Takao's head back, glides over the skin of Takao's neck--ghostly, calm, brilliant. He scowls, then presses and moves along the underside of Takao's jaw, tracing the scabs that refuse to heal. "Of course not," he says, "don't be preposterous."

There is a small smile there that Takao can't place--secretly affectionate, strange. He hopes, then; wishes and wants and craves. Perhaps for the fingers (pliant, healing) that Midorima holds close to his heart, or a cure that may never come. A cure for the nightmares (the red, and the blue) and the ache in his muscles. For the terrifying, bone-chilling illusions caused by something as minor as a Nurse gently rubbing at the sores on his neck.

Because suddenly he is there; where an angry, red-eyed British soldier holds him for so long he has a tight ring of purple that wraps itself around his neck by the end of the day, inching toward his collarbone; where another holds a gun to his back in the middle of no man's land until a bullet falls in between them, leaving Takao to scramble away and dive--dive down to a ditch, under another body.

Takao remembers thinking that he would much rather die than stay and watch the gray soldiers drop one by one, but in the end the survival instincts made Takao's eyes turn black and his hands into murderers; desperate, violent, needing. During a charge--the bayonet into the shoulder of a red man and into the stomach of another; feeling one in his leg and another against his arm and the cycle down, down, down, and blood and a stretcher, Midorima's face and his tender words and gauze, gauze at his wounds.

He's sweating, too, but cold-- there is a shortage of blankets when he arrives at the Church and he is put next to a small child, the thing must be barely fifteen, to get through a winter storm. And they both sweat and the sheets turn wet and they feel like dying, as Midorima checks on them, who whispers that they are holding the bed for too long, that other people need it. And when the child dies, Takao takes his blankets and does not feel sympathy, only buries himself and attempts to warm his feet (he is afraid to look at them, their weakness and cowardice).

But these are the things to remember when the nights grow too long, when he is too afraid to fall asleep, when fear mixes with resentment over his predicament, all of their predicaments. Why must they, citizens of the many, succumb to a war of the few?

"Midorima," says Takao, as he feels the doctor's hands gently slide over his collarbone, "are you busy, right now?"

"I'm always busy." A curt reply.

"When?"

"When, what?"

"Are you free?"

Silence. "I have an hour break at 22:00."

"Okay."

Waiting is something that Takao is accustomed to; he waits for death, waits to breathe, and waits to sleep. He knows the nuns are waiting, waiting for the infection in his leg to spread, urging Midorima not to amputate; the recovery will take longer, they insist.

Survival instincts can only last so long, he learns that day, watching a man fall off his cot with blood pooling out of a wound in his abdomen. He later asks Midorima why he became a doctor (a man who covers up affection with a serious face and strict tone is not meant to be here, in this place).

Midorima's fingers--they are at his jaw, again, as if trying to erase the scars there. "I wanted to help, I guess," he says, "Fighting is idiotic. Healing is useful."

Takao laughs--earnestly, as he is happy to know. "That's awfully hypocritical. You're helping the idiots."

"Someone has to, right?"

In the winter, the sun withers away so early, and Takao listens to the soft breathing of the young men on the cots nearby, of the laboured breathing from across the room, as the sun fades. The gentle wisps of Midorima's breath that reach his ear are warm, somehow, and underneath his sheets and the extras the nuns collect from the few unused beds, he does not feel like shivering anymore. "I suppose you're right, Doctor."

_Idiot_ , Takao thinks he hears Midorima whisper, before his eyes droop closed. _Absolute idiot_. It is said with warmth and love, however, and Takao would laugh if he could; the muscular, tall man with a soft-spoken voice and even softer heart falling in love with patients destined to die. Irony is cruel.

 

 

Takao wakes up to snow.

Through the stained glass, wind howls and rattles the windows. Takao wonders if he is even alive; the room is quiet, all men still. Perhaps they were undergoing the same transformation; wading into a pit of tar, locking their lungs in a sea of black, so as not to breathe in the stench of empty flesh. He decides that he is alive when a man on a cot nearest to him wails in agony, pointing to an invisible enemy above his head. Even in the dark, the man's eyes flash and he begins to cry.

Amputation, Takao affirms to himself. Hell, he knows, would look like this, and he has no desire to visit it again; Red. Red and black and blue, with screams ricochetting off of enclosing padded walls.

And Takao has his own reasons, as Midorima's helpers hold down him down on the operating table. A saw, a knife, a blood-stained silver, cuts into his thigh. There is sweat that drips down Midorima’s arms, and Takao focuses on how it shines in the dim light; better than than Midorima's face, twisted into a look of agony and rage that no one would accurately be able to understand. War is unkind, he remembers. War is unkind, cruel, uncompassionate.

He desperately wishes he has the ability to create a meaning to what they are fighting for, but through a mind hazy and cracked open with pain, he is not able to come to an answer. So instead of importance, he is placed on a bed without a leg and phantom pains that curl into his stomach, raw and angry.

When Takao dares to open his eyes, hours later, Midorima is staring at him, something embedded so deep in them that it overwhelms Takao, at first. "You're the true idiot here," Takao manages to say, voice cracking.

Midorima lets out a wry laugh, rubs his eyes--Takao will never again mention that he saw moisture in them that day, fighting against his red cheeks--and mutters, "That could be debatable."

"Not debatable, but fact," whispers Takao, eyes drooping shut.

"Don't question someone who has studied and seen more things than you," Midorima says, his voice hardening. But Takao knows the cover up, by now. Knows the way Midorima's eyes crinkle at the sides when sympathy is only too prominent.

"I don't think you understand," he murmurs, and wonders if Midorima can hear him; the sound barely reaches his ears. "I've seen everything. More than any man needs to."

I know. I can only hope that this war will be over soon, the expression on Midorima's face reads, even as he rises from the cot and walks out of the room to join the other doctors in shuttling more patients onto beds that they simply do not have anymore, beds that carry disease and spots of blood that everyone knows is futile to erase.

Unfairness. Takao should not call their situation unfair, but under his breath he wonders if, somehow, they are too attached to each other, men who have scarcely known each other longer than a month, who have barely talked against the coma that Takao's eyes uncover.

He chooses not to think, in the end. He insists that he at least deserves that much.

 

 

No one is ready for spring to come.

The frost on the side of the stain-glass windows begins to fade, as March approaches and passes by. Takao learns how to walk with crutches, hiding from those that threaten him to leave the church by crawling underneath Midorima's desk and withholding his breath so long his vision begins to swim and he wonders if he is so desperate that he is willing to faint, over and over, to stay by Midorima's side.

Their conversations are no longer than when they met, the immediate infatuation that would cause scandal and execution, if found out. Their kind, as most would put is, is not necessary. Because of this they have touched each other scarcely twice, simply a gentle brush against Midorima's hips in the weak pre-spring sun, swallowing dreams and other such impurities that Takao promises to take on.

Every last one, he says, as Midorima trembles and learns to hold his breath, even if they are at least a mile away from the church, between groves of trees and grass littered in dew, smelling of new things to come. There is a special kind of silence, there, that they both treasure even in the wake of it all, in the center of birds chirping overhead and bugs singing and leering from the tops of leaves.

Spring passes by slowly, in this way; the careful disentanglement of them both from the horrors of what they have seen and the troubles they have wrought. Takao, when not laying out on the grassy fields away from the building he has spent too many months in, much past his time to go home, helps the doctors shuttle in new patients, each month growing younger and younger as recruitment drops in age.

It is almost pathetic, how desensitized the doctors and Takao have become.

"You could leave," one of the nuns says to him, voice laced with worry. "You got lucky, in the end. Make the use of it."

Takao struggles to not look Midorima's way, where he lays pressing his cold fingertips against a young boy's forehead. "I have to help," he says. "I owe a favor."

"To Doctor Midorima?" the nun laughs, a smile on her lips. "You're too kind to him, Takao. It's his job."

_Job_ , Takao angrily thinks as he pulls Midorima out of the church at four am, silence their only companion as they walk through the same forest of trees they do every day, slamming Midorima against a tree and laving a line down his jugular, relishing in the soft, erratic heartbeat he feels there.

_Job_ , he seethes, dropping onto his one knee, too used to balancing on one leg, a thought he decides he will save for later, as he makes Midorima shudder and whine, and it's not just work, what they have here, not a simple action-reaction payment that never leaves the realm of societal expectations and norms.

Takao does not like being labeled as payment, and he wants the nun to know this, to shove it down her throat and realize that not everything is always what is labelled right by society, so he hums and takes Midorima in deeper, ignoring every stigma, every word ever said against this, every condemnation, every sentence to hell.

It is not perfect, in the end; Takao stumbles and trips, and embarrassment wells up in his face because he remembers that nothing has ever done him right and won't now, not when he lacks a leg and will only remain a cripple for the rest of his life. Even as Midorima helps him up, worry replacing arousal, Takao yells at no one in particular and fights against Midorima pressing him against his chest -- he does not want to be coddled, he wants to prove that he can be something, anything, instead of a sick shell-shock patient destined to be killed by his own hands.

Spring, Takao knows, represents change, but even as a timid sun replaces a more powerful one, days growing warmer still as June inches ahead and it's harder to lie out on the grass as he did previously, he is not sure if he as grown or simply become more reliant on a person so susceptible to the same diseases that take out patients every day.

"You're being idiotic," Midorima mutters in his ear, early morning dew beginning to seep into their clothes.

"That's not exactly something you say for comfort."

Takao feels Midorima's hands tighten against his back. "But it is," he says, breath ghosting over the side of his neck in a way that makes Takao shiver, "I'm right in front of you. You're being an idiot. You've already done something important, here."

 

 

Takao knows he has to leave by the end of summer.

The war is winding down, they say. The nuns can no longer house a cripple, no matter how helpful he may be, when phantom pains and flashbacks interrupt surgery and he trips and knocks a doctor's arm, effectively ending the procedure and a soldiers life.

"It wasn't your fault," the nuns say. "It just can't happen again."

But it does. The heat becomes blistering, and staying in the church for too long makes his head spin; it reminds him too much of his draft, of the heat of the gunpowder explosions, of the heat of blood, of --

He often blacks out before he can remember more. Behind the church, where there is nothing in sight but the grove of trees and grassland for miles, he can breathe and wade his feet in the river nearby, cool against the sweat on his legs. The shade is quiet, save for the buzzing sound of insects, and leaning against the trunk of a tree offers no haunting, waking memories, not when the stench of rotting flesh cannot reach him.

Midorima finds him like this many afternoons where the temperatures rocket too high and it becomes impossible to move, even the nuns retiring to their rooms, sweat palpable in the air when too many patients are nearby. Takao often sleeps underneath the sway of the leaves, but can sense Midorima's quiet approach, his head tilted in clouded admiration.

The river is too close to the church to huddle too close, sharing heat, but Midorima sits as near as is acceptable, tracing lines on Takao's wrist lying between them, a faux way of linking hands, easily able to be passed off as stretching his hands through the warm soil rather than through the heat of their fingertips.

And during it all, the world spins and turns. Shots are fired and the self-proclaimed leaders yell out their speeches, but they merely breathe and inhale the summer air. When Takao begins to tug uncomfortably on his sweat-soaked clothes, he drags Midorima into the river, breathless and splashing, single leg paddling against the current as Midorima ducks him under in embarrassed anger.

"You look so ruffled, Shintarou," Takao laughs at the way Midorima's hair plasters to the side of his head, the liquid that streams down his glasses, the shine of droplets against his shoulders.

"Says the washed puppy," Midorima growls, swimming back to shore to ring out his coat.

"No fun," Takao smirks, floating on his back to stare up at the strips of sunlight between the trees. "Y'know," he eventually mutters, in a voice so sentimental even Midorima looks up in surprise, "I wish we could always be like this."

"After the war, maybe." Midorima replies, shrugging off his shirt and wading back in.

"Do you think?" Takao asks, gliding over to where Midorima stood.

"Of course," he says, incredulous. He gently caresses the side of Takao's cheek, eyes fond. "We'll move somewhere near a river."

"We?" A smile.

"I mean -- if you ... want to ..." Midorima mumbles, cheeks suddenly flushing.

"Yeah," Takao says, wading into shallower water so he can slither his arms around Midorima's waist. "I want to."

With the air as still as it is, Takao hears the gentle thumping of Midorima's heart against his chest, and he wonders if there was a time when he didn't crave this, the seemingly abnormal simplicity in the middle of something as tragic as millions of people buried and burned. He thinks he can hear them, now, beneath his feet, the ones who are angry and regretful and the ones who only can wish for better days.

He'll live like they could not, he decides, even as he hears the calls of the nuns approaching, yelling for their head doctor. They jump apart, Takao plastering a laughing grin on his face before shooing Midorima away, assuring him he'll be fine, he needs more time to recover from the morning heat of the surgery.

What he does not say is that he knows he will never be fully normal, not even with Midorima there, but he can hope, he can wish. He can want, crave, and desire. It is an improvement, if not small, and he cherishes the knowledge of it.

"I think I love him," Takao announces to no one in particular, tipping over to float on his back again, to feel the water lick at his skin again.

He can hear the loud exclamations of the nuns wondering why Midorima is as soaked as he is, and it sets off his heart in an odd way, the resentment in the doctors voice when he yells, loud enough for Takao to hear, _I fell in_.

When the sun falls and light weaves through the trunks of trees instead of the branches, Takao remembers this and laughs, tripping over an elevated root. Later, Midorima will scowl as he treats the large gash on Takao's cheek and ask what happened, and Takao will lean in and whisper _love_ and the "head doctor" will shout in surprise and flush red, and everyone will turn and tilt their heads, but Takao won't care, too busy holding his stomach, mouth frozen open in glee.

 

 

Takao leaves before the days begin slipping into nights.

They promise to meet each other, somehow. Every doctor, every nun, every patient; they know the war is over, and it is only a matter of time.

Midorima walks Takao back to the main road, gnawing on his lower lip. "Where will you go?" he asks.

"By the sea, not a river," Takao says this time, leaning back and forth on either crutch.

Worried faces lie beneath sorrowful goodbyes, when neither emotions knows which should surface. Nothing is ever exact, nor predictable, but there are times when Takao wishes Midorima could follow him without worry, in a world where Midorima does not have to muffle his dreams at night, the screams that someone is grinning with a bullet at his head, a world where he does not heave at six in the morning from the smell of dead bodies in the room next to them.

A world that is simple. Such a thing cannot be prayed for, cannot be expected, even as Midorima looks down at him in such a way that makes his heart clench tightly in his chest.

"Did you," Takao starts, looking down, "ever wish you weren't a doctor?"

Fighting is idiotic. Healing is useful.

"No," says Midorima, straightening his back and shoving his hands in his pockets. "I don't."

"Why?"

"That's obvious, isn't it?" he glowers, seemingly angry that he has to say it.

_Oh_ , Takao thinks, and smiles slightly, his eyes shining. "Y'know, I think that," he leans forward a little, as though whispering a secret, "I've loved you for a while."

"Are you going to make me say it?" Midorima's hand reaches up to cover his mouth, the tips of his ears and cheeks steadily filling with color.

"No," says Takao. "You can say it when you see me next."

 

 

 

The war ends a few months later, Takao hears from the radio.

_We lost_ , Takao thinks, watching the bartender serving him bow his head in defeat. _Lost_.

_We lost, but I'm still alive, somehow._

He stands, and exits.

 

 

Takao reaches the sea in what he estimates to be a year and a half after he last said goodbye to Midorima.

Vast, is his first thought.

Lonely is his second.

Expectations are often much higher than reality, and Takao takes note of this, now, when the cold wind raises goosebumps on his arms and the sand shifts his crutches, making it hard to stay upright. He misses the compactness of the river, their river, how it conformed and bound them together.

In stubbornness, he stays, and waits. No matter his disappointed thoughts or beliefs, he has a promise that he knows he must keep.

 

 

At two years, Takao manages to get a job at the town by the sea. It is difficult, with a language barrier and their prejudice against his disabled leg, but he proves himself capable and is slowly given a livable salary.

The salt, the call of the birds, the endlessness of the horizon, becomes suffocating as he learns of futile promises, of how easily they wither and break.

Waiting never seemed so long.

 

 

Midorima appears at three and a half years, looking no less taller or younger than when Takao last saw him, what seems like another lifetime ago.

Sand weaving between his toes and balancing on one leg to pull in a boat from the water, Takao is, for once, lost for words.

"I didn't think you meant it," Midorima eventually says. "Going so far."

"You took a while," says Takao, flippantly. He isn't sure why anger is beginning to bubble over in his stomach, rising to his chest, his throat --

"Took a while to leave the hospital, with everyone being discharged so fast," he continues, walking forward to help Takao tie the boat to a wooden post. Their fingers brush, and each jerk their hands away. "Do you still ...?"

"Do I still what, Shintarou?" Takao whispers, looking up at the same man, the exact same, that he waited and wished for. He still does, somehow, in the endless dreams mixed in with the nightmares of someone running that Takao cannot catch up to.

"You ... know."

"You're the real idiot," Takao shakes his head, rubbing his forehead with his palm. Looking down, he stares at the roughness of his foot, the odd blisters and calluses, wondering what other new things they must learn about each other when previously they knew everything. "Will you say it, now?"

Midorima leans in and presses his lips against Takao's, despondency coloring his face. He asks a question in the slow movement of the kiss, and Takao responds by opening his mouth, grabbing the back of his, _his_ , doctor's head. It is reassurance, somehow, more than declaration, in the small pants and gasps and desperate clutches at clothes, even if anyone, anyone at all, could so easily see them from the beach entrance.

Above all, Takao thinks the kiss is sad; two broken down and beaten men, cast off to the side after a war that made everyone suffer too great.

But, then: "I love you," says Midorima, and it's enough, it's enough.


End file.
